#DoGoodWork Presentation at Pecha Kucha Rapid City

I am an obsessive proponent of a movement started by my buddy Ian Matthews over at Espresso Digital Co called #DoGoodWork.

The principle tenant of this movement is to stand your ground, burn your bridges and #DoGoodWork.

In large part, it’s geared toward the creative industries where people often think they are experts and are more than happy to give you completely unfounded advice as to how a photo should look, how a web design should change or how you can do your commercial “better”.

The problem is exactly this: They Aren’t Experts!

So they “just try to help” and make our lives hell.

That’s a bit of a big lead in, but it’s because I’m passionate about it.

So, I signed up for something called Pecha Kucha Night last year and decided this would be the focus of my speech.

For those of you who have never been, or who are reading this thinking, “Pet your what now?” Here’s Pecha Kucha in a nutshell. It is The art of concise presentations.

In other words, you get on stage, you have 20 slides and each slide auto advances every 20 seconds…Make it count… GO!

So, I got to go up onstage, rant and rave about something I’m wildly passionate about, ruffle a few feathers and see some old friends. The funniest part: I was nervous as HELL!

I had this idea that I needed to follow notes, because all the presentations I had seen in the past used notes. For those of you who know me, you know I’m very Off the Cuff. Part of the reason I don’t like doing theatre as much is because you have to memorize so very much…..I’d rather get the gist of it and roll with it. But that doesn’t always work.

SO, back to the presentation, I get to the stage, notes in pocket, palms sweating (MY palms sweating before going onstage, am I sick? This is weird…) and they turn to me, do you want the lights up so that you can read notes or do you want them down.

Screw it, I’m all in, I think. “Lights off. ”

Now I”m committed. I have two choices now. Be awesome, or stand on stage and fumble around at my presentation.

The first few slides were a bit rocky, but then I gained my momentum and had a blast. The Presentation went pretty well too.

During the presentation, I know I ruffled a few feathers by mentioning that Rapid City is not always the most progressive city when it comes to advertising and creativity, but I got my point across and it falls in line with a saying of mine:

You know your doing something right when somebody gets pissed off. So, I got a few haters and I got a lot of cheers. It seems the creatives of the world are tired of being treated as if they aren’t experts.

I really appreciate all the work that goes into putting on an event like that, and I really appreciated a platform to rant at. I’m really looking forward to giving another presentation during the spring season.